Celia Dale was born in 1912 to parents who were both on the stage. She was once a secretary to Rumer Godden, and also worked as a publisher’s advisor and a book reviewer.  Her first novel, The Least of These, was published in 1943, and she went on to write twelve others. She won the 1986 Crime Writer’s Association Veuve Cliquot Short Story Award for ‘Lines of Communication’, which appears in her only short story collection, A Personal Call and Other Stories. She died in 2011.